Tuesday, December 9, 2014

A Mean Review of the First 3 1/2 Books in Stephen King's Dark Tower Series

I waited a long time before sitting down
to tackle Stephen King’s epic series, The Dark Tower. Mostly because I knew it
would be daunting. Most of King’s longer work is. I’m a big fan of his short
stories—in fact, I would say he’s among the finest practitioners of short
stories alive today. His collections EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL and FULL DARK, NO
STARS are brilliant examples of emotional, intelligent and insightful
story-telling.

I mention that just so you know I’m not a “King
Hater”. Hell, even many of his novels still work for me, like THE SHINING, THE
TALISMAN (possibly my favorite), SALEM’S LOT, and even ODD THOMAS (hello, MaxBooth, you sly dog!).

Anyway, with that established, you’ve
probably guessed from the title of this post that I kinda-sorta HATED THE FUCK
out of The Dark Tower.

Oh, it didn’t start with full-on hate. In
fact, I sort of liked it at first. It was a gradual thing, the build up to
loathing.

The first book in the series, THE
GUNSLINGER, was actually pretty enjoyable. It was relatively short for a King
novel (which means it was normal book size for the rest of us). And the premise
was simple: Roland, the Gunslinger, chases the Man in Black across the
Wasteland, for what reason we know not at that point. Along the way, he
encounters Jake, a boy ripped from our world and stranded in Roland’s, and, in
one of the highlights, the two of them journey through a creepy underground
passage, fight some horrid monsters called Slow Mutants, and Roland makes a
chilling sacrifice.

I liked it, and began the second book
immediately.

THE DRAWING OF THE THREE was longer and
the story considerably more complex, but at that point I was still in King’s
corner. I enjoyed the directness of Roland’s mission, crossing over into our
world in different eras to seek out, rescue, and utilize the individuals he would
need to complete his quest. And there were some genuinely great bits—the thing
I remember most about it now was Roland’s rescue of Eddie Dean, a heroin addict
and drug mule who would be essential to Roland. King leeched every bit of
suspense out of that scene as was humanly possible, and when I honestly thought
he couldn’t stretch it any further without snapping, he pulled it off.

But the first signs of eventual rot began
showing around the same time. Eddie Dean was… well, he was one of the most
irritating characters I’ve ever read about in my life. I hated him so very
much, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what King intended. I think he meant
Eddie to be jokey and flip and always ready with a wisecrack to lighten the
mood, but he comes off instead as immature, inappropriate, and obnoxious. If I
was Roland, and the success of my journey depended on Eddie Dean, I would just
kill the fucker and say forget the whole deal.

The other central character, Odetta/Detta,
was almost as annoying.

In the third book, THE WASTELANDS, Eddie
just gets more and more obnoxious, and the story starts to feel more and more
bogged down in extemporaneous drivel. World-building, I suppose they call it,
and perhaps someone more versed than me can find something to enjoy in all that
Tolkien bullshit, but gah… I really, really wanted King to just get on with it.
The uneasiness, the feeling that the honeymoon was going to end that I’d
started to feel toward the end of the second book, really hit home with the
third one. Long bits of it were just no fun anymore. And Eddie, Eddie, Eddie…
why wouldn’t he ever shut the fuck up.

And remember the sacrifice Roland made in
the first book? Well, no problem, because in THE WASTELANDS he gets to sorta
UNDO it and everything is groovy with Jake again. So that emotional high point in
the series is rendered null and void. No worries (although, to be fair, it is
hinted that Roland may yet again make the same sacrifice farther down the road
if need be. Maybe he does, I wouldn’t know and don’t care now).

So I finished THE WASTELANDS feeling a bit
annoyed and not really keen on the idea of starting the fourth one, WIZARD AND
GLASS. But at that point I still felt like I had the strength to carry on and I
guess I really wanted to say I’d read THE DARK TOWER series.

WIZARD AND GLASS starts with our heroes
captives of a crazy train who hates them. The train is called Blaine. Blaine
the Train.Yep. And Eddie saves the day by being fucking obnoxious Eddie and
telling stupid fucking jokes. Blaine the Train pulls a Star Trek and
short-circuits, because Eddie is JUST THAT ANNOYING.

All that took, like, a thousand pages.

After that, Roland sits them all down and
starts telling them a long, boring story about how he fell in love with Susan
Delgado and how he got his guns and his mother and father and blah blah blah,
and if I had thought the sequence on Blaine the Train had taken WAY too long,
this “story-within-a-story” just pushed me right over the edge.

I literally threw the book across the room
and gave up.

I packed up the remaining books in the
series, as well as the ones I’d already read and threw those fuckers in the
trash. I waited for the garbage man to make sure he took them far, far away. I
suppose I could have just given them to the library, but ONE, I’m sure they already
had more copies of it than they knew what to do with, and TWO, why would I do
that to my fellow human beings?

I know a LOT of people who really love THE
DARK TOWER, people with taste I admire in most things. My apologies to you
lovely people, but I think you might be defective in this one area.

And for anyone who wants to scold me for
being mean to Stephen King, let me remind you again that I’m generally a fan.
And honestly, I think he will be just fine, don’t you?

I guess that’s all I have to say about
that. In conclusion, fuck THE DARK TOWER and the Blaine the Train it rode in
on.

2 comments:

Interesting! You and I hated and loved opposite things. Except Eddie. He was an annoying prick. The whole thing was SO FUCKING LONG. One of the thongs that kept me going was recognizing other characters and places from other King books. I will read Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla again anytime. But probably not the rest.

Heath Lowrance

...is the author of HAWTHORNE: TALES OF A WEIRDER WEST, CITY OF HERETICS, THE BASTARD HAND, FIGHT CARD: "Bluff City Brawler" (as Jack Tunney) and DIG TEN GRAVES. His work has appeared at Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, Chi-Zine, Pulp Metal, The Nautilus Engine, and others. He has been a movie theater manager, a tour guide at Sun Studio, a singer in a punk band, and a regular donor of blood for money. He lives in Lansing, Michigan.